


happy endings

by spells



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Canon Compliant, Haikyuu!! Manga Spoilers, M/M, POV First Person, Timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27108796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spells/pseuds/spells
Summary: Things had been different, at 16.I was still in love with him then. I was still in love with him for a long time.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma
Comments: 5
Kudos: 38





	happy endings

Things were different back then. Things had been different, at 16. Nothing had ever been the same; change is an irrevocable condition of humanity.

Washijo-san said Brazil would widen my horizons. Beach volleyball. Feeling the sun on my skin, sunburns appearing after the shower, creamy white moisturiser to avoid my skin from peeling off. He said I would meet new people and become better, stronger. I had wanted to. Everyone had said I would, had said I’d like it, had said I could do it.

I was still in love with him then. I was still in love with him for a long time.

You know, I never thought we would break up. I never thought our time would come. We had always been right to one another, I had always wanted to see him at his strongest, he had always been there to push me further. There was nothing but comfort from being with him. We were nothing but love, in its multiple forms. We were love when he held my hand during the summer and we were love when I had to find a new way to crush him from across the court. We were love, distilled.

We had been together for nearly four years when I left. I didn’t know a world without him, or loving him, or having him.

Before, he’d always come and visit; my mom and Natsu loved him. Natsu had her phase of being obsessed with Tangled, pretty Disney princesses with big 3D-animated eyes, and she liked braiding his hair, much to his misfortune. I could hold his hand, though. When we were alone, I could kiss his knuckles, and my heart always thought we’d be right.

He came over a lot when we were both sixteen. After he graduated, a little less; after I graduated, I tried to go over and visit him. He was so busy, university and streaming and meetings. He’d always been barely older than me, my senpai by just a smidge, my boyfriend, my safe space. He became a snapshot of adulthood, and a bit of the comfort waned. He wasn’t unrecognisable, he hadn’t stopped being the love of my life, but I had to find a new footing. I had to try and understand him all over again.

Perhaps it didn’t help that most of our relationship felt doomed. Perhaps it didn’t help that I set the timer on our time together early on; we hadn’t even been together for a year when I decided to go abroad. I couldn’t care, and I know he couldn’t get himself to talk to me about it. Maybe we should have talked more. I don’t know if that would have fixed it. Maybe I should have thought things through. I shouldn’t have assumed we’d have the hang of long-distance. I shouldn’t have assumed things would have stayed the same, and shouldn’t have assumed we wouldn’t grow out of who we were.

I’m not sad, by the way. He’s never made me sad. Not even now. I guess nostalgia has an inherent sadness to it, the ache of not being there, the ache of missing an ancient happiness. Nostalgia is being happy and sad at the same time. Nostalgia is being sad about being happy, and being happy about being sad.

Conciliating emotions has never been easy. I’ve always felt things at full force, sensations so strong they pushed the life out of me, loving so big, falling so fast, from so high up. The issue with being able to climb, to jump, to fly, is that you don’t control the wind, and you don’t control the sun, and you don’t control the world. Your wings are yours, but the world doesn’t care. Even what’s yours isn’t yours to take away. Nothing will be with you until the end.

People are their own people. He’s always been his own person.

I might have been so absorbed by my own story that I didn’t realise he was telling his own.

He’d just moved into his house; it smelled like Tokyo. There were folded cardboard boxes in his hallways, and fluffy little birds nesting on his roof.

He had a king-size bed, and the guest room wasn’t furnished yet. I guess I’d been afraid I wasn’t going to sleep with him. I guess I was a kid, still. Maybe it took me losing him to grow up; maybe I was holding on so tightly because I was afraid of being thrust, alone, into a world all of my peers were already mastering.

He warned me to stay interesting when I was 16. He told me not to get boring, then, with the threat of money, with the threat of my career, and with that look in his eye that had me enamoured from the day we met.

I asked if he was going to get a cat, since he wasn’t living with his parents and their old dog anymore, and he said he didn’t trust himself to take care of something helpless. I knew what he meant, but I also didn’t. I sort of wished I could offer to move in with him, adopt a kitten together, warm up the mattress for him in his big, empty home. I just hummed, and took a cup of coffee when he offered it.

It already felt useless for me to be there. I didn’t feel like I helped the emptiness of his home go away at all. I felt as alive as a coat rack.

It didn’t feel like there were things for us to do together. It didn’t feel like I had a point in being there. He’d just asked if I wanted to come and visit, and I did. I had never told him no, and he’d never told me no, either. Not in an unhealthy way, but we had just never wanted to. We were so in tune. We were perfect for each other, we always had been.

We lay quietly in his bed, from the early, late-afternoon sunset until the mid-morning sunrise. We looked at each other until we fell asleep, and looked at each other after we woke up. I knew I loved him, I always had. I never wanted to forget him, and I know I never will. I tried to find the words, inside my head, for all that he was. For the faint tip of his nose, just a bit pointy, and the soft slope of his face, from his temple to his cheekbone to his jaw. I tried to find the words for the colour of his hair, for all of his colours. His hair wasn’t black, the tips weren’t blonde. One time, on a midday, mid-weekend voice call, I asked him why he didn’t cut his hair. I couldn’t see his face, but I could; if there was one face I could evoke from memory at any given time, it was his. The last time I’d seen him, his hair had just started reaching his shoulders. Soon enough, there’d be the same length of bleached and black. I asked him why he didn’t cut his hair, and he asked me why he had to, why should he do it.

Sometimes he said some things I didn’t know how to respond to, but I’ve always been good at changing the subject.

He never kissed me in public. I didn’t mind; I didn’t think kisses on the mouth were all the rage, anyway. But when he dropped me off at the train station, squeezing my hand one last time, it felt final. I was still going to see him again, I wasn’t going to leave for Brazil yet, he was going to be the last person I said goodbye to at the airport, but that didn’t change anything. He squeezed my hand and smiled like he only smiled for me, small big smiles, little giants, and I think that’s when my chest hurt for the first time.

Let me skip forward a bit; let me ask you something.

Should I have known that we were doomed?

I called Kageyama after we broke up, because I didn’t know who else to talk to. Because I hadn’t talked to Yamaguchi much, and Yachi was busy, and I didn’t feel comfortable talking to Mom and Natsu about this. I also knew Kageyama would probably be awake by now. I also knew he’d listen, and wouldn’t hang up on me.

I called Kageyama, and he listened even though I didn’t know what words to use. I don’t think he knew what words to use, either. I think I just wanted to know someone was there. I think I just wanted some of my happiness back, and when had I been happier than playing beside him? When had I been happier than at 16?

Kageyama said it was normal for people to grow apart. Kageyama said it was normal for high school, for teenage relationships to not last long, and to not grow into adulthood. He said that, but both of us knew he didn’t have the place to say it. He and Tsukishima are still together, now. They’ve been talking about engagement. Yachi likes to tease Tsukishima about what’s taking them so long.

I thanked him for saying that, thanked him for staying on call with me. We both knew he didn’t know what to say. I think I might have woken him up, that day. He helped by being there. I missed him, I missed home.

Home was supposed to be here with me. Home was sleeping in the same city as me, home was in the same timezone as me, home was visiting and supposed to be visiting  _ me _ .

Home should never be a person. Home should be a state, being home not as in located in one place but feeling the fulfillment of knowing, of familiarity, and of joy.

Home is happiness. Homesickness might be the same thing as nostalgia, but like a feeling dressed in different colours. Homesickness is being sad about not being happy, when the feeling is known and the feeling is yours. Homesickness is when happiness belongs to you and you don’t have it.

I hadn’t gone home in so long. Maybe I shouldn’t have stayed in Rio for the two years straight, but it’s done, now, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I knew my mom missed me. She texted me every morning. I knew my friends were growing up just like I was. I knew we were all learning so much, maybe more now that we were apart than we had when we were together.

I’d been in Rio for almost a year then. I should have been used to it. I shouldn’t have been the same kid that cried in the corner of my room because I was alone, and this was strange, and I was stranded in the middle of the unknown. I shouldn’t have been chock-full of regrets.

I wasn’t sad because he had broken up with me. I guess I was sad because that was my last string, cut. I guess I was sad because I knew I couldn’t trust life to stay the same, even though I’d been warned that human beings are ever-changing, ever-new.

I grew out of the sadness quick enough. Shed it, like a layer of skin, like childhood clothes, because it didn’t fit me anymore. Always changing. I’m human, too. He wasn’t the only one to grow up.

I felt alone, and I felt like my story didn’t matter. But it was still mine, and I could still tell it. I just had to find the words.

I didn’t grow more determined out of spite, or out of emptiness. I didn’t grow more determined to prove anything to anyone. I just wanted to know where I could go, and where life would lead me. I’ve never done things because, or for, someone else. I guess a good thing about being alone is only having to prove things to yourself, and not a single second option.

We stayed friends, thankfully.

He says I still surprise him. He says he’s always watching, because he never knows what’s coming next. He says he can’t take his eyes away from me.

I learned to stop loving him. I learned a lot of things. I learned how to make rice like they eat it in Brazil, and learned the best way to take tequila shots, and learned that my story wouldn’t end when I stopped loving him. Being in love with him had been part of the beginning of this story, but not mine. Being in love with him had been one thing among millions, and he could become just another face in the crowd if I let him. 

I had to let him. Let him go, let him be. By the time I did talk to Yachi about it, I had come to terms with a bit of it, but she knew it all better than I did. She spoke with the ideal words, without needing the time to find them. She always helped.

Coming home had been so good. Home had become hugging my friends, all of them, and my family. Home was the desperate happiness of being with them, and the tears of relief.

Relief, and desperation, are a sequence of cause and consequence. There’s one, then the next. The order depends on the context. One can be happy, and one can be sad, but the one that is sad can be happy, and the one that is happy can be sad.

It surprised me that I didn’t need any time to get back used to Japan. As soon as the jet lag went away, everything was just the way I left it, no switching gears, no nothing. I didn’t forget how Japan was, I didn’t let myself. I’d only grown to know more.

My story went on, without him. Happy and sad. Always different. I had come to terms with change, I had accepted it. It was part of me, as it was of anyone else. I had always admired the people who used change for their own benefit, the strong people who knew what they were doing, who mastered the element of surprise. I’ve always been clear as day, transparent, and shamelessly easy to read. I forgot I had grown up being a decoy. I forgot I could use change to my favour, too, because no one would expect me to.

I don’t know if he’s still watching. I don’t know if I want him to. I’ve found a new pair of sharp eyes, and I’ve found home within the familiarity of friends as teammates, and I’ve found those whose change delights everyone around them.

I’m happy most of the time.

I knew my story wasn’t over, I knew my world didn’t end. I wasn’t sad. Natsu tells me she used to think I never got sad, because I was always smiling. She didn’t understand how anyone could beat me when I didn’t let myself be taken down.

I don’t think of myself as beaten, anymore. Or crushed, or wrecked.

I try to think of myself through someone else’s eyes. I try to see myself through seeing them. I try to look at their face and know it, I try to be true to every new person I meet, I try to be happy letting them know I can be sad.

When we met again, after our breakup, we didn’t have to say anything. We’d both changed, but I could tell we knew each other better now that we’d become different people without trying to track the other’s growth than we had when we were morphing and trying to make sense of life in real time.

It was evening, and it was dark. He said my eyes looked different. I pushed his hair behind his ear.

I wondered how his story had gone. I wondered if I could flip back the pages and read it. 

He asked me how I had been. I smiled, big, and he smiled, small.

He hadn’t changed at all, had he? Things were still the same.

I asked how he had been. He faded into the night, and I wondered if he was happy. He had never made me sad. Just seeing him made me smile, because I knew this, and I knew him, and I was home.

Our story had ended well. Our story had kept going. We were telling so many stories, all at once, and I didn’t know how a single of them would end. I still don’t. Every ending can be happy, if looked at from the right perspective. No one’s story is just their own; no life is a monologue.

Everything can change into something happy if told the right way. You just have to know how to write it.

**Author's Note:**

> i completed nanowrimo 2018 by writing a 60k kenhina fic that i never even edited; it was titled 'happy endings, the sun, and other things i can have', but i've always referred to it simply as happy endings. i couldn't think of a better way to repurpose the title, or a better title for this fic.
> 
> thank you for reading. if you enjoyed it, consider a kudo, a bookmark, or a comment. you might think you don't make a difference, but you don't even know how much it means to authors. you can also come talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/kenhinabot); i'm always talking about ships or fic.


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